When Coincidences Become Too Creepy To Be Random

We’ve all experienced those strange serendipitous moments. You run into the person whom you were just thinking about, your friend shows up at the party in the same dress as you, you have a song in your head and then hear it on the radio that same second. What really is a coincidence?

Have you ever been walking down the street, with romance the furthest thing from your mind, and then BOOM, you run into someone you last dated at your favorite restaurant on a date with someone you can’t classify as unfortunate looking? That happened to me this week. I was just casually listening to Mumford and Sons Pandora, and checking out everyone eating dinner outside on a random weeknight and there it was.

Like nails on a chalkboard, like a dagger to an artery, like a sock in the stomach…shock at its worse: a public coincidence. The wind gets knocked out of you. You were just trying to walk home from picking up your favorite takeout and instead you experience what I like to call an emotional drive-by.

A few days later, I’m walking into spin class and I hear a familiar (but annoying) voice. It’s another someone I used to date, 50 blocks away from his apartment at MY spin studio. I was just thinking about him earlier that day. This is when I have to ask the universe, “Am I being Punk’d? Is Halloween coming early this year?”

We, of course, sat directly across from each other in the class and made awkward eye contact the whole time as he most likely talked about how I look naked to his friend. Later that week, after rummaging through a Halloween store and reminiscing about doing the same thing with a guy I dated last year, I run into him walking downtown – nowhere near either of our homes.

What is a coincidence?

All of these coincidences in my own life got me thinking: what is a coincidence? By definition, a coincidence is, “the act of unplanned coinciding.” Is this the universe giving me the middle finger, just when I’m trying to forget certain people, events, times, places, or is it trying to help me gain closure from it all? Reminding me that I didn’t settle when I could have, a reminder that I made the right choice. Or is it just the random act of coinciding that makes people feel like they have to justify it happening for a reason because the fact that it did happen is too creepy to contemplate?

Or was it your intuition telling you that you would bump into someone soon? How will we ever know?

Write it down

Try to make a physical or mental note when you think of something random and write it down. I am going to try and do this more often because I, for one, would like to test this theory of coincidences. Maybe at least then we wouldn’t be so taken aback by a run-in on the street.

Either way, coincidences are groovy. There are three choices here: a coincidence could be random. Second, a coincidence could be magical: the idea that maybe the universe is doing you a favor, or helping you through something. That maybe there is something bigger out there watching our missteps and decisions we make day in and day out.

And finally that a coincidence might occur because we are all really intuitive creatures that might not know yet how and when to hone in on that intuition but that it doesn’t make it any less real. So the next time a coincidence happens, good or bad, try to smile at it.